


colorblind

by killaidanturner



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Colors au, M/M, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Science, in which tony thinks he can invent colored glasses, steve and tony are the two most stubborn people to ever stubborn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-08-14 13:49:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8016430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killaidanturner/pseuds/killaidanturner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He thinks that his heart must beat to a pattern of flickering stars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> because i'm living in 2012

Tony is four when he asks what color an engine is, a circuit board, the wires between. It’s the only time Howard talks about color.

 

“A circuit board is green, the wires copper and red.” He lets Tony sit on his lap while his hands reach across the table, picking up a small screw driver and showing Tony how to hold it.

 

He’s four when he learns the word _prodigy._

 

* * *

 

Unconditional. Tony thinks his mother's love must be unconditional for her to be able to look at him and not see his father’s mistakes.

 

Tony spends a fuck ton amount of time wondering how someone like Howard Stark sees color, how he got to meet his soulmate.

 

He wants to know why the universe gave that to Howard when at the same time he looks at Tony and sees all the things he used to be and could of been but instead sees nothing but disappointment and resentment.

 

* * *

 

Tony Stark stands at his parents graves and its tragedy spilled out in front of him, rain soaking his hair because he refused to stand under the umbrella that Obie was holding for him. He doesn’t believe in god, certainly not now, not with his mother being lowered into damp earth.

 

He lets the rain fall into his eyelashes, lets it mix with the tears threatening to fall. His socks are wet because he dressed in a hurry, his pants riding a little bit above his ankles. How the knot on his tie is off center and just a little too loose. He can hear it now, how much of a disaster everyone thinks this is, thinks _he_ is.

 

He clenches his fists as he thinks about his mother, how he will never look into her eyes and know their color, never know how her hair looks in the summer when the sun is at it’s highest.

 

He’ll never hear his dad say “good god”, ever again and there’s a sigh of relief and a pang of regret swelling inside of him.

 

The only god he’s ever known comes in the form of wires and circuit boards, and when he’s older in the bottom of a bottle.

 

* * *

 

Anthony Edward Stark falls into beds that aren’t his, kisses people on rooftops, and lets sheets swim around his limbs like waves.

 

With each kiss he thinks, _let this be the one._

 

It’s hard when people grab at his heartstrings, that to get into bed with him all they need to say is, “I think I saw a flicker, I think I saw color. Are your eyes green or brown? It was so fast, I couldn’t tell.” That all it takes is a lie and a little bit of hope. So he lets people say the lie, and eventually after hearing it so many times he stops believing in it and instead takes them to bed because that’s all they really wanted anyways, to say they slept with the great Tony Stark.

 

_Is that what they’re calling me these days?_

 

* * *

 

When he’s in the desert he wonders what color the sand is. In a way he’s grateful he doesn’t see color, that he doesn’t know the true horror of what is happening. He knows the reactor in his chest glows but doesn’t know if it’s white or blue.

 

“It’s a mix between the two,” Yensin says and Tony didn’t know he had been speaking out loud.

 

He doesn’t know color but he knows the weapons have his name on the side of them. He knows that thousands are dying under the name of Stark and his heart _bleeds._

 

* * *

 

Steve’s heart beats like hummingbird wings, fast against his chest. He can feel each beat pounding against this chest as he tries to catch his breath. He’s nine when he realizes that he’s not like the other kids, that he’ll always be a little too small, that he’ll always be a little sick. He tries to ignore the words of the boys on the schoolyard, of how his bones must be hollow and his wrists too thin and frail, how he moves like bird.

 

His mother runs a hand down his back, her fingers trailing over his spine as she tells him about colors to try to steady his breathing.

 

“Can you,” he wheezes, takes an inhale, “can you tell me about what color hummingbirds are?”

 

She doesn’t ask why he wants to know about them in particular but she smiles at him and continues running circles on his back.

 

“They’re many different colors. They go from purple to blue to green, sometimes they have red or orange. They’re very small but very fast and when they fly by their colors swirl together.”

 

He takes a breath, leaning over this his head between his knees and wonders what the dirt on his shirt must look like to his mother with her worried eyes and soft smile.

 

Maybe he only learns to fly because he’s looking for more solid ground.

 

* * *

 

After his father died, Steve had asked his mother if her world went back to grey.

 

She smiled lightly at him, “only some days.”

 

“Why only some?”

 

“It goes gray on my saddest days but it doesn’t leave forever, not unless you really want it to.”

 

“What do you mean?” He asked as he sat down next to her, his back hunched over as he looked at the veins in her hands, bone thin and frail.

 

“When I’m happy I still get to see colors. There are days where they are not as bright, and days where I lose them completely.”

 

“What do you do to get them back?”

 

“Well, I just think of you,” she says it with a smile he hasn’t seen in days and feels something bittersweet work it’s way inside of him.

 

* * *

 

Standing in the middle of the Stark Expo Steve thinks that it would look beautiful in color, that the car that started to fly on stage must be something flashy. He doesn’t know why but he feels like it must be red.

 

He doesn’t expect that he’ll ever see color, not when he’s smaller than most women that Bucky sets him up with. He doesn’t let himself hope because who would love someone who they think looks nervous and delicate?

 

 _If they would just see_ , he would think to himself as he looks in his reflection from glass encasing a poster with a picture of Uncle Sam.

 

The thing was, there was nothing nervous or delicate about the guy. Not when he’s fighting guys in back alleys, not when he’s jumping on grenades.

 

* * *

 

When he sees Peggy Carter hope blooms in him.

 

When he steps out of the machine, over six feet tall and sees Peggy’s hand reaching for him, a thought quivers through his mind,  _this is it._

 

When she tells him he was meant for more he closes his eyes for just a fraction of a second and when he opens them the world sits in shades of gray.

 

“If we dance, do you think-” He doesn’t finish the sentence, doesn’t know where he was really going with it but Peggy understands.

 

“I think there’s a possibility,” and she smiles at him, wide and bright, and Steve in that moment wants nothing more than to see how the sun truly reflects in her eyes because even a pencil and paper wouldn’t be able to capture it.

 

At night when rain pounds against the tents and he feels the cold breeze through the flaps, he lets himself think about what her lipstick would look like on the collar of his shirt.

 

For once he’s glad he doesn’t have colors. When he rescues Bucky, he’s glad he doesn’t know what color a bruise is on his skin, he’s glad he doesn’t know how blood looks coming from him. He’s even more relieved that he doesn’t when Bucky falls from the train. When Steve loses his own grip and watches Bucky fall. He’ll never know the color of the snow, the shades of white and blue and how fear danced the same shades behind Bucky’s eyes.

 

He never tells Peggy that he could have saved Bucky, that if he had just moved faster, done something differently, anything at all, that maybe he could have saved Bucky.

 

He doesn’t tell her sitting in a chair in that bar, liquor burning through him, that he hopes he never gets colors, that after today he never wants to see the world for how it truly is. She doesn’t deserve his darker thoughts, the ones that stretch like shadows across his mind and keep wanting to take.

 

* * *

 

When he pulls back from kissing her, lights flashing past them, he feels his heart ache in his chest as he sees the realization in her eyes.

 

That they are growing backwards and Steve Rogers won't, _can’t,_ breathe color into her.

 

* * *

 

She won't let him say goodbye, so she makes him promise that he owes her a dance and he thinks if he were to make it out of this then that’s when he would get his colors, with Peggy’s hands in his and her hips swaying to a beat.

 

* * *

 

Steve Rogers wakes to the sound of radio static, to the sound of an old baseball game he remembers sitting in the stands. His mind is trying to work out how it could be playing, maybe an old broadcast? But no that can’t be right, something in the air feels different.

 

His mind wanders back to tossing popcorn in his mouth, to Bucky’s hand on his back as he laughed, the way that his eyes crinkled around the edges and the sun warmed their skin.

 

_No, this can’t be right._

 

When the woman walks in he can already tell that she talks a little too fast, that her accent is just slightly off.

 

And when his feet go pounding against the New York pavement, running between people and cars, when he looks up at all of the billboards, electric buzz of the subway beneath him, and his eyes swim with black and white, he knows he’s lost all hope.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t sleep and he tells everyone it’s because he’s been sleeping for seventy years. He says it with a smile and it always earns a small laugh. Steve doesn’t sleep because when he closes his eyes all he can see are the lives that were lost at his hands, the lives that went on when his didn’t. It plays on a loop; Peggy, Bucky, Peggy, Bucky.

 

Even though he knew Peggy wasn’t the one, even though she went on to do great things, all he can think about is how he wished it could have been them in some way. That the universe or God hadn’t dealt him this hand.

 

So he takes out his sleeplessness on punching bags, and he finds himself wishing that his knuckles would hurt, that the skin would at least crack from the wear of hours and days stacked up against him. He finds himself wishing he could feel something other than stretching pain in his heart, that he could feel something other than wishing he didn’t want more.

 

* * *

 

When Fury hands him the folders, old fashioned, paper tucked inside a manila folder. Steve has the urge to ask Fury if he did it to make him feel more comfortable, if this is some sort of attempt to make him feel like he’s looking over a report, going over a debrief, anything to make him feel like he was back in the war.

 

 _Why wouldn’t you show me on a tablet like you have for everyone else? Is this out of kindness or out of some roundabout way to make me feel like how I used to?_ As if this one act would bring forth Captain America and put away Steve Rogers, Steve with his hummingbird heart and grief running through his veins.

 

Strategy, strategy, strategy, Steve thinks it must be working.

 

Fury leaves him to the profiles, he doesn’t tell him much, just that these people, _they need a leader, someone to look up to._

 

When he opens the second folder he feels his heart skip and stutter when he reads the name, Stark.

 

His hand runs across the page, traces the letters of Anthony E. Stark and lets his eyes fall on a photo of a man in a tux with wide eyes just like Howard’s.

 

Questions run through his mind, a hundred all at once. He wants to know this man, wants to ask him about Howard and what his life was like after. He wants to tell Anthony, “you’re father was a good man.”

 

He learns that this man wears a suit of armor, that all of it encases him and his ivory bones so he can take flight. He learns that Iron Man tries to do good, that he has saved countless people and Steve finds a smile tugging at his lips.

 

He reads the file, all of it, lets every black letter soak into his mind. He reads the report left by an agent Romanoff. He reads the things about the difference between the two, that the suit of armor apparently carries with it a new personality as well. He lets his smile fall as he reads about Tony, as he reads about the son of his friend and the legacy he’s left.

 

Iron Man: Yes

 

Tony Stark: No

 

* * *

 

“Yes Mr.Stark, No Mr.Stark, of course Mr.Stark,” quickly turns into, “god damn it Tony,” which eventually becomes, “you’re all I have too you know.”

 

* * *

 

If Tony Stark had a soulmate he figured it had to be Pepper. If he was going to see color it was because Pepper was a constant in his neuro chaotic lifestyle, that she was stability in his self destruction. He figures it has to happen, it has to be her. He’s heard that her hair is strawberry blonde and he tries to imagine what it would look like on her and the only word that comes to his mind is beautiful. He wonders if her cheeks blush the same color as her hair and if he could get that color to rise, if he could run his knuckles across the sharp angle of her face and know that he put that color there.

 

He was never one for believing in soulmates but if it’s going to happen with him then he thinks this is the only logical solution.

 

He loves Pepper endlessly but endless isn’t enough.

 

You can force a soulmate, you can’t force the bond, you can’t. Not when they smell alcohol on your breath and wonder why they aren’t enough to make it stop.

 

He tries different tactics, loves her the way she doesn’t deserve. He tries his best but he knows deep down it’s not good enough. That for all of her patience it isn’t enough for anything to bloom.

 

His kiss always tastes like screaming, like desperation, like he wants it to happen more than anything and when he tells her that soulmates don’t mean anything to him, that you can love without them, she knows the lie by the taste of his tongue.

 

* * *

 

It stops, after Pepper, he stops sleeping around. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t think about it. He just can’t stand the thought of a white glow casting shadows across bodies he doesn’t know, if his chest is exposed like nerves or wires, he doesn’t know the difference.

 

* * *

 

He meets Steve, sorry, Captain America, and instantly hates the colors red, white, and blue in sequence. He knows his suit is red because he had some metaphorical idea about bleeding, and gold to say that it’s the opposite color of the weapons used to kill. Even though he tells everyone he picked them to be flashy, he likes it better that way.

 

He thinks about changing the colors, not wanting any hint of red because he knows that it also represents something bigger, it stands for honor, truth, justice, _blah blah blah does Steve ever shut up?_

 

* * *

He confronts Fury, “you didn’t fucking tell me that you unearthed Captain America!”

 

Tony has always been one for scenes and dramatics. Fury isn’t phased, he looks up at Tony and lets him pace around the room.

 

“Is there a problem Mr.Stark?”

 

“You know! You damn well know!” He’s a cinema of emotions, fear, rage, regret, pain, all fighting for dominance on his features.

 

“Howard Stark spent a lot of time looking for the Captain and it was a Stark Expedition, that you still fund, mind you, that fucking found him. So would you please like to explain to me why you are in my office, yelling?” Fury raises an eyebrow daring Tony to say more.

 

“My whole life, my-” Tony doesn’t finish, instead he grinds his teeth and clenches his fist.

 

All he can think about are stories, years of how perfect Steve way and “good God Tony, why can’t you try just a little bit harder?” _Why can’t you be more like Captain fucking America._

 

He doesn’t tell Fury that after his parents funeral he found schematics for the shield, early designs and ones from even after the good captain when under the ice. That when Tony found them he thought about burning them, that he tossed all of them together and found himself lighting a match before he let it burn for so long that the flame touched his skin, until he snapped out of it.

 

He doesn’t tell him that the blueprints now sit in his workshop, buried under a pile of nuts and bolts, coffee stains, and an old fashioned design of the shield that his father never finished.

 

“Nevermind.”

 

“This isn’t how your father would have welcomed Steve back!” Fury shouts after him, getting under Tony’s skin, and if Tony slams the door so hard that the glass on the windows shakes the same way that his hands do, he doesn’t tell anyone.

 

* * *

 

They don’t understand that they’re living parallel, that their stories started the same with death and sorrow, with hope, and someone believing in them as they became the definition of the word hero.

 

They don't understand that they're rubbing salt in their wounds when they unhinge their jaws to try to devour each other whole.

 

Steve bites at Tony, “You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you.”

 

Tony bites his cheek, digs his nails into his palm and stands just a little bit closer to Steve. “I think I would just cut the wire.”

 

 **“** Always a way out... You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero.”

 

Tony doesn’t remember what he said after that, but he lets Steve’s words play in his head and settle in their like something cancerous and growing.

 

* * *

 

Not having colors is a sharp spike of consciousness driving a wedge into his everyday thoughts.

 

He doesn’t change the suit. And when he falls through a wormhole, the close light of stars before his eyes, he thinks, _I can put myself on the line._

 

* * *

 

With New York on fire he thinks it looks the way his heart must feel. Crumbling and on a path of destruction as he looks up into Steve Rogers' eyes, his fingers splayed out across the Iron Man suit and a smile on his face as Tony takes a gasping breath.

 

He thinks that his heart must beat to a pattern of flickering stars.

  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All Tony has are his mechanic hands so he decides to build.

 

Steven Grant Rogers was always good at harboring guilt, the way he still holds himself responsible for not catching Bucky when he slipped from the train. So maybe he feels a little bit guilty over saying the things that he did and then watching Iron Man aim for the stars.

 

* * *

 

Something runs through Tony Stark’s mind about cures, algorithms and mathematics. He gets an idea in his head that if he will never have a soulmate then he can at least do something to make it seem like it.

 

He’s spent his life saying that color doesn’t matter, that he sees the world through problems and solutions. He feeds the same line over in interviews and everyone takes it for what it is. Some people fall into the same mentality, if Tony Stark doesn’t need a soulmate then neither do I.

 

It doesn’t cause a revolution but Tony is pleased nonetheless.

 

He works on a solution.

 

Glasses, he thinks. He can find a way for the eyes to see color. There has to be a way.

 

He wonders how someone like his father got to see color. He thinks of Maria, of her soft hands and wonders what the color of her eyes were because he was always too scared to ask.

 

* * *

 

Tony’s life could be told through a series of headlines, black ink and crumpled up paper. He dreams up his newest one, BILLIONAIRE CURES THE COLORLESS, he even lets his mind go to, AND ON THE SEVENTH DAY TONY STARK SAID LET THERE BE LIGHT. He grins to himself, a comparison to god in print would really be his favorite one. He would cut it out, put it in a small frame and set it on his desk.

 

He can imagine Pepper looking at it and sighing, imagine her tired tone as she lets the muscles in her back slouch, her hands drop to her sides as she says, “Tony, is this really how you want to be remembered?”

 

And the thing is, it is. Not in the sense of defying any type of god or science, though defying both is kind of his specialty, but he thinks of how it can change the world.

 

Before he can get there, the conversation starts out like this; “And how do you plan to do this Tony?” Pepper has her arms crossed but she knows this is a battle already lost. Tony has made a decision and she knows that means he won't quit.

 

“I don’t know the details yet, I mean, if anyone can do it, it’s me.”

 

She just nods her head as she watched him pull up screen, after screen, after screen, as he started having Jarvis categorize every color there is.

 

“I just don’t know if this is-”

 

“-the best idea I’ve ever had.”

 

“-it’s a terrible idea Tony.”

 

He contemplates for a moment about it, “I just want to do what’s right,”  turns to look at her with only to realize that she has already left and what he thought was a moment has been hours.

 

He sends her a text:

 

_Think about it Pep, think about all the people who will get to see what they never thought they would. It will change the world._

 

Because Tony Stark always has to have the last word.

 

_You mean you._

 

He can hear it in her voice perfectly. She doesn’t take it any further, doesn’t say it’s because of how fear has settled itself in his mind.

 

He doesn’t have anything to say to her after that.

 

* * *

 

Sure if he let himself think about it too much, it was selfish, the way he wanted to see what others did. He wanted to know what color Rhodey’s eyes were, Pepper’s skin, his Mark suit, he wanted to know the color of his coffee with and without cream, the color of the sky and all of it’s phases.

 

Maybe it has something to do with wondering how Steve’s hair looks during the day compared to at night. Maybe it has something to do with how when he looks at Steve he feels like his spine isn’t the only thing holding him up anymore.

 

* * *

 

Even if Tony wasn’t Iron Man, even if he didn’t have elements keeping his heart running, he thinks that he wouldn’t be able to live the lifestyle he used to. That he no longer could come home at ungodly hours, kicking off his shoes and throwing his tie and falling into sheets that drown like the ocean with limbs he won't remember.

 

* * *

 

It was never that Steve wanted to be some great American symbol, not really anyway, he just wanted to do good, he wanted to be able to say, “I saw the bad things happening and I did _something._ ”

 

It’s strange to him, standing in the Air and Space Museum, looking up at the 107 and a repeated loop of him and Bucky smiling at each other. He doesn’t understand how he became a symbol, something for people to look up to.

 

Maybe he can’t process nostalgia, how he still thinks he’s some scrawny kid in Brooklyn. He almost wants to laugh at the thought, that he hasn’t seen bloodshed, heartache, the way a skull cracks open.

 

So he’s not just Steve Rogers anymore, he’s Captain America, he’s the perfect image of what’s good, and right, and pure.

 

It didn’t matter to the rest of the world that he didn’t have color, that his eyes didn’t see the red, white, and blue others did and sometimes it was enough to convince Steve that it didn’t matter to him either.

 

Sometimes.

 

Now, here, he feels like he’s waiting, that he really is a man stuck in time. Stuck in this odd empty space, in this desaturated state, in this endless, too tight skin and sleepless nights, in the photographs that line this museum to the hazy sketches under his bed, to this fraction, to this record scratching thought in his head; _it’s too late._

 

* * *

 

When they’re in a room together Steve thinks that they must looking something like animals, lights shining down on them, shadows casting their harsher features making them look more wild.

 

Maybe it’s also the way he tries not to let his hands tremble when he’s around Tony.

 

* * *

 

It’s not that he wants to fight with Tony, it’s just that, _he doesn’t listen._

 

Maybe Steve is a little too commanding, a little too overbearing, a little too old fashioned but honestly Anthony Stark is-

 

Steve takes a breath and figures he needs to make a decision.

 

He doesn’t ask permission, because he thinks that would be something odd. It’s not like he’s seven anymore and asking if he wants a kid on the playground to be his friend.

 

Instead Steve just starts acting like him and Tony have always been friends, that he’s always slotted into his life, including the parts where it was cold and there was a tent and a cot and a war. He starts asking him questions, hangs out with him when he appears out of the workshop, brings him food, and hopes that it’s working.

 

He also starts talking to Tony, well because he doesn’t really have anyone to talk to. He doesn’t have anyone to talk to about the strange TV shows, how they all seem to breed violence.  The trees don’t breathe the same, the ones that line the coast and how his motorcycle breezes past them.

 

But he thinks that Tony might understand how one’s own face can look like a shadow.

 

Steve tries the typical, he pulls at his memories like ribbon strings, silk like and fraying. He draws, and draws, and draws, bites down and clenches his jaw as he screams into pillows, as nightmares and ghosts try to rattle his bones. But this? Talking to Tony, the bickering even, sets up a flow in his life that is easier to focus on.

 

At first Tony gives Steve strange looks but he quickly stops and falls into the same pattern as Steve. Falls into something more comfortable and gladly explains to Steve about elements and particles and Tony has been talking for he doesn’t know how long about accelerators and quinjets and vibranium and he realizes that Steve hasn’t once tried to stop him.

 

Tony comes out of his workshop more, gives Steve as passcode, tells him that JARVIS will unlock the workshop door if he calls himself Captain Handsome.

 

Steve laughs, thinks it’s a joke until three days later when he’s standing outside of the workshop, fist pounding against the glass in defeat.

 

Of course Tony can’t hear him over the sound of the music blasting, so Steve sighs, “JARVIS, this is Captain Handsome, could you let me in?”

 

The door to the workshop unlocks and opens.

 

“I didn’t know you were serious,” Steve tosses his jacket onto the back of the couch.

 

“I’m always serious.” Tony turns off the blow torch and looks up, “wait, what? What am I being serious about?”

 

“The name I have to use to get in here.” Steve gives Tony a look, the look, the one that says Captain America is judging you.

 

“I could change it for you, how about sweetcakes?” He wiggles his eyebrows turns the blow torch back on.

 

“No, no, no, it’s fine.” He figures he should be irritated but he can’t seem to help the smile on his face.

 

* * *

 

Tony says he’s conducting research, which is partially true.

 

He learns how long it takes once someone meets their soulmate and the answers, there’s no consistency. He can’t pick out a pattern.

 

There are times when it’s instant, and there are times where it takes days or months, even years after they have met the person.

 

Sometimes it’s a moment, sometimes it’s a grand gestures, sometimes it's an assassin coming to kill you and realizing that if they don’t it will change both your lives forever, and sometimes it's something small like “well I was doing the dishes and-”

 

He slams his fists onto his worktop. “Damn it! JARVIS, run a scan again, look for a pattern, anything.”

 

“I’m not calculating anything from the research, results are inconclusive.”

 

“Then we get more research. I want you to go through every goddamn book, article, any documentation about how people have gotten their colors.”

 

“Right away, Sir.”

 

He supposes he’s glad that JARVIS isn’t programmed to argue back.

 

* * *

 

Both of their nightmares are in black and white, gray and moving, slithering tentacles reaching for him and holding on tight.

 

* * *

 

When they’re out in the field, they fall into step. Half the time Steve doesn’t have to use the comm link, Iron Man seems to already be there executing what Steve was thinking.

 

And after, when Steve and Tony are still in sync, he lets their hands brush.

 

Lets them touch until Tony says something, does something, to get under Steve’s skin and Steve is stepping away and Tony is falling out of an orbit he never fully got caught in.

 

And Steve hates that he made that comparison.

 

* * *

 

Tony doesn’t understand, he can’t figure out why one moment him and Steve are fine and the next they’re frenetic, frantic, the definition of tearing down human connection.

 

“It’s because you’re literally stuck in time Rogers!” It’s a low blow and they both know it.

 

Steve wants to yell, wants to scream, “I’ve been trying, can’t you see what I’ve done for you?” Instead he clenches his fists, “at least I’m not trying to defy the very laws of physics because I know that I’ll never see color.” He says it with heat but his voice steady.

 

It’s the implication, they both read through the lines of it easily; _because no one will ever love you._

 

After, when Tony is alone, he checks his chest for an exit wound, some other way to explain the way how it feels like he’s bleeding.

 

* * *

 

All Tony has are his mechanic hands so he decides to build.

 

* * *

 

Steve hears the word futurist a lot when it comes to Tony and in a way he understands but it also makes him want to tell people, _you don’t know him_. Which is what he says one day, accidentally, to Natasha and Clint.

 

He’s glad his back is turned and they can’t see his wide eyes as he focuses on his coffee cup.

 

“What do you mean by that?” Steve swears he can hear the damn smile in Clint’s voice as he asks it.

 

Steve is about to say, you don’t know how he likes old fashioned movies, how he watches Bonnie and Clyde and tells Steve it’s a love story but he watches it for the cars but Steve really knows it’s for how movies were made back then. Or how he fixed up an old radio just for Steve, and how it now sits in the workshop where they both can listen to music filtered through static. That on a work top table there are cuff links to a tux that Tony never took back up to his room, that the cufflinks are from Sweden with the year 1944 engraved on them. That his favorite book is The Great Gatsby, which he says is for the parties but Steve knows better.

 

“Nothing, I didn’t mean anything.” Guilt starts creeping it’s way back inside Steve’s chest.

 

“Oh man, I wish you had color so you could see your cheeks right now.”

 

And that’s how Steve Rogers learned that Clint Barton could see color.

 

* * *

 

“It was instant,” Natasha tells him.

 

It’s not something they let be known to a lot of people, they make a compromise that well it could get them compromised. Natasha still thinks it’s obvious with the way her and Clint orbit around each other, how they always seem to be in each other’s space.

 

When they do talk about it, Clint brags about it, the way Natasha looked with blue eyes and her porcelain skin covered in blood. She rolls her eyes and hits him on the back. It makes it easier when he talks about how beautiful she was, when he makes a joke, makes it easier than thinking about all of the blood on her hands.

 

There he was on a rooftop, arrow pointed at her from across the balcony and when she blinked she saw his sandy brown hair and his olive skin.

 

He dropped his bow and arrow, the sound of metal clinking to the ground.

 

Natasha could smell war on her hands, blood, and the urge to run, run, run. She turned on her heal, body wanting to tremble but a stronger need for survival screaming at her.

 

“Wait!” Clint was already climbing, was already on the balcony and making his way through the double doors. “Wait! I know you see it too!”

 

She turned back around, eyes wide with fear.

 

“You’re here to kill me.” It falls past her trembling lips.

 

“Was.”

 

In that instant she understands.

 

It takes her days, days that turn into weeks, weeks that turn into months, months that turn into years to fully trust him but he never once leaves her side.

 

He works out routines with her, code words, small games, and eventually her heart opens and the red room doesn’t haunt her the way it used to. Not when his arms are wrapped around her at night and whispering, “it’s ok Nat, I got you.”

 

It’s at night when she allows her walls to come down that she fully understands why it was him.

 

* * *

 

Apologies, Steve can do that, he can apologize.

 

“JARVIS, it’s” Steve lets out a breath and looks up at the ceiling, ‘it’s Captain Handsome, may I please go in the workshop?”

 

“Access denied, Mr.Rogers.”

 

“Ok, thanks,” Steve leaves, he does what he does best, he runs with his feet pounding against the pavement.

 

* * *

 

Even with the serum there are still nerves in Steve’s body that remember the cold.

 

* * *

 

It takes a few days, it takes Steve sitting at the bottom of the stairs with hope strewn across his body.

 

It takes a battle and being forced to sit in the cockpit of the quinjet because Natasha is claiming sprained wrist as she glares at Steve to take the co-pilot's chair.

 

“Will you let me apologize?” Steve says without looking over at Tony.

 

“Do you have to ask permission for everything?” He can hear the bitter notes in Tony’s voice.

 

“I really am sorry.”

 

“If I accept your apology can you stop walking around like tower like a kicked dog?”

 

“Ok, you know what,” Steve is starting to stand but Tony reaches out, reaches and touches Steve’s wrist.

 

They both look at it, the way that Tony’s slender hands fit around Steve’s wrist and Tony resists the urge to move his thumb in a circle, to push up the cloth on Steve’s suit and feel the warm skin there. Instead he pulls back quickly, his hands finding the closest thing to stay busy with and starts flicking switches and hitting buttons.

 

“I’m sorry too,” its said with a rush of breath, eyes avoiding Steve’s.

 

Steve sits back down and looks straight ahead out of the windshield.

 

“Dinner tonight?” He asks like it’s normal, like they haven’t been ignoring each other for days.

 

Tony looks at Cap’s helmet, at the wings on the side and thinks of a boy falling through the sky, thinks of angel wings, angel bright grins, and the fluttering in his chest.

 

He squashes down the idea, buries it somewhere deep in knee high grass and thinks, _don’t fall in love with someone that will never love you._

 

He’s already had one tragic love story in his life, he really thinks he can’t handle another.

 

* * *

 

In the morning Tony peels his undersuit from him like a second skin, in the morning he counts the aches in his joints, the sharp pain of the bruises, in the morning the clouds swell like his busted bottom lip.

 

* * *

 

Steve starts looking at Tony in a different light, one that’s a little bit softer. He realizes that Tony’s edges aren’t as sharp as they seem and that he is a kaleidoscope of the things that have happened to him.

 

It makes sense in a way, how he seems to be different people to Steve depending on the time of day, depending on whatever thought is playing on loop in Tony’s head that causes him to be the mechanic locked away in his shop blasting old rock, or the Tony who sits in the kitchen whistling Sinatra because “classic, Steve, do you know what classic music is? Or is this current to you?”

 

Tony is contradictions, two things at once, quiet and loud, tender and rough.

 

* * *

 

Tony imagines Steve in his space, imagines them pressed close as he says the words, “you could hurt me if you wanted to,” and that Steve whispers back, “how?”

 

He imagines grabbing Steve’s hand, resting it on his lower back and that Steve’s architect hands slowly trace up Tony’s spine like he’s making skyscrapers.

 

He snaps himself out of it, sighs, exhales, fuck just tries to catch his breath as he sits at his worktop with a thin pair of glasses in his hands.

He laughs, bitter and tired, as he runs a hand through his hair.

 

“What the fuck am I doing?” he can feel the oils from the day in his air, around his temples.

 

“Constructing glasses so that the world may see color, Sir.” JARVIS chimes in and Tony rolls his eyes.

 

“Thanks,” he mumbles under his breath as he leans with his arms on the worktop. He twists the glasses around in his hand, feels the weight of them before he slowly holds them up to his eyes.

 

He can feel his breathing accelerate, feel himself try to hold this moment.

 

He blinks, glasses a few inches away from his face and everything is still. He swears he can feel the world tilt, or shift, and tries to think of what theory that is.

 

It swirls still in colors of gray, he blinks once, twice more as he tries to pull the shapes in front of him into focus.

 

It happens then, a flicker, just the smallest inclination that there was something else in his life for a moment that wasn’t hues of black and white mixed together. It seems _vivid_ , aftershocks running through his body.

 

He doesn’t know the colors, they were too quick. He pulls the glasses away from his face quickly, gets ready to pull them back up when he sees Steve standing in front of him, hands in his jean pockets.

 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Tony stops listening to Steve as he pulls the glasses back up to his face, this time fully sliding them on.

 

Nothing happens, not a damn thing, there’s no flicker of colors, no lights changing, just the same lackluster he’s always seen.

 

He resists the urge to throw the glasses, to let them hit something hard and shatter, to let the pieces of glass sit there until DUM-E attempts to sweep them up.

 

Instead he sets them down, pinches the bridge of his nose and lets disappointment sink into him.

 

“I’m sorry, I can go.” Steve points to the door, unsure of his own actions.

 

“No, no, it’s fine.” Tony taps his foot against the stool he’s sitting on and braces himself to look at Steve again.

 

Nothing.

 

“I think I’m hallucinating.” Tony squeezes his eyes shut and tries to make sense, tries to understand if the glasses had been working for that small moment.

 

“Would you like me to check your vitals, Sir?” JARVIS speaks up once more and Tony immediately shoots down the idea.

 

“No, no, no need for that.”

 

“Normally I wouldn’t approve of your caffeine intake but do you want to grab a cup?” Steve still has his hands in his pockets as he motions to the door leading up the stairs with a tilt of his head.

 

“Yeah, coffee, that would be great,” and Tony thinks, swears, that the color of Steve’s pants are blue. The name of the color sticks to the roof of his mouth, sickly sweet and thick, and Tony tries to keep himself from thinking of things like kinetics, and how things get put into motion. 

 

* * *

 

When they're sitting down their knees knock against each other's, bone against bone, and everything feels warm.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve feels his lips pulling up in a smile, finds his feet shifting and himself sliding just a tiny bit closer to Tony. He wishes he could blame it on something, molecules or gravity, but knows it’s because he wants to lean further into Tony’s touch. Tony who’s hand is playing a small symphony on Steve’s back, who’s fingers can’t stop moving in small rhythmic patterns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not to be like !!! but i actually am proud of this chapter so i hope you enjoy it

It’s been four days and normally Steve wouldn’t think anything of it, think anything of the way he hasn’t even seen Tony in the kitchen for coffee. Something about this time feels different.

 

He wonders if it’s what happened over coffee the other night, how their knees touched and Steve smiled, his hands reaching. How Tony’s bottom lip trembled before he said, “you could cut the sun in half with your smile.”

 

Steve had paused, held his breath, and wondered what Tony meant. When all Steve had wanted to say was, “ _you live in a half light, I never see the real you, not fully at least. But God am I trying to.”_

 

Instead Steve sat there with his eyes searching, like Tony was a battlefield and this was a tactical advance. He had let the silence stretch too long, let the worry wash over Tony’s features before it was too late for him to say anything in return. At that point Tony was talking again, this time about lack of research, explanation, anything really that could properly categorize color to the colorless.

 

“Do you know anything about colors? Anything at all? Did your mother ever teach you certain colors were certain things? Like how we know that grass is green and the sky is blue and yadda yadda yadda?”

 

“I know that the grass in the churchyard wasn’t bright, I know it was faded in spots, almost to a yellow. I know this because the grass there was dry, it crunched underneath even my feet. I know that blood is red and that it’s the color people lose their life over, I know it’s the same color as hearts, the same color as pomegranates, the lipstick that Peggy always wore but someone else had to tell me what it looked like. I know these are all red but I don’t know what kind of red, I assume they’re not all the same. I know this the way I know parts of your suit are red, but I don’t know how. I was told once, out in the trenches, snow up to our ankles, that there was a flower that hadn’t died yet, a poppy trying to break through the snow. I know that the petals on that flower were red, even under that sprinkling of white but I don’t know the contrast of it. I just knew in that moment that I would remember it, and I understood why poppies stood for remembrance, stood for our fallen soldiers and not a lot of days go by where I don’t think about that. So maybe when I think of that poppy now I think of you, because poppies also stand for sleep, and peace, and I know those are things that you need. Yeah, you can say I know a bit about colors.”

 

Red was the same color of his knuckles in back alley brawls, the same color as the seats in the movie theater that him and Buck used to take dates to. That the bricks in Brooklyn are red and that bleeds home.  Red is also associated with hurt, with little girls being trained as killers, to the color of an hourglass on a spider, to the spectrum of fire and to Steve the list seems endless. Some of it good, some of it bad, but he can’t gauge how he feels about this one specific color when there is so much attached to it. Not when Tony drives red cars and Steve uses words like ostentatious to describe them just to see the look on Tony’s face.

 

Tony doesn’t know if he is tight jawed or open mouthed, can’t gauge his own reaction because it feels like he’s floating across the universe only to land back in this very room.

 

“I think you’re eyes are blue. I’m not sure though since I don’t exactly know what blue is but I feel like that’s what they are. The other day when I put on the glasses, for a second, maybe not even a second I saw your eyes and they were blue.” His words run together, like he can’t catch his breath and Steve feels like all the air was just sucked out of the room.

 

It’s not eloquent, or really what Steve wanted to say, but he feels pre-serum again, nervous and fragile as he stutters out, “they are blue. Er, my mother, she used to tell me they were blue all the time. She said when she was sad and thought she could feel the color slipping away that she would think about my eyes.”

 

It’s tangible now, even if it was temporary, to associate a color with something. Even as Steve is speaking Tony is looking into his eyes as if he can will them back into color, as if he can force himself to see it.

 

He knows that it was the glasses, knows, but Tony Stark is a master at the art of hopelessness. He doesn’t realize he’s leaning across the table, that the end of it is pinching into his skin and causing lines, doesn’t realize that he still hasn’t let out a breath.

 

Steve is up and moving, falling out of orbit, trying to become demagnetized but he doesn’t know how to stop the pull he’s feeling.

 

It causes Tony to move his chair, to have it scratch against the floor. “I’m sorry,” it spills out of his mouth like it’s all he knows how to say, like it’s all anyone expects him to say.

 

“No, it’s o-”

 

“It’s not, I don’t know why I told you that. I should go back down to the workshop, yeah downstairs. I should go do that.” His hands don’t know what to do, they move around him, looking for pockets, something to grab onto as his eyes look at anything but Steve.

 

Steve hadn’t seen him since but every morning when he gets up and looks into the mirror, he thinks to himself, _blue._

 

* * *

 

Four days can seem like a lifetime or no time at all to Tony, it depends on what he’s doing and what factors are involved. When you add in Steve Rogers the math seems to go askew and nothing seems to have a right answer.

 

He sits there in the same position for over twelve hour straight until someone comes to move him, to tell him to eat, to sleep, to do something but remember the way that the light reflected off of Steve’s hair and how his eyes swam.

 

He didn’t know, didn’t know what it would be like to have it, even for that miniscule of a moment, then to have it ripped from him.

 

Tony has spent years telling himself that color didn’t matter, that he was above it, but he finds that a thing he might be good at is lying to himself.

 

It sits under his skin, roots itself there in his veins, the flash of color. He doesn’t even know if he’s remembering it right, if his brain can even fully process what happened. All he knows is that he finds himself wanting. And that the want has more and more to do with Steve, more and more to do with the small freckles that line his skin and the shadows that he can make.

 

* * *

 

They have something in common, they both don’t know when to quit. Tony thinks at least he knows how to call his own bluff, that he either over thinks or under thinks, sometimes doesn’t even think at all, but at least he’s aware of it. So this time is different, this time he’s telling himself to step back, to stop, to back down, to stop whatever this is, but he can’t seem to stop his hands.

 

He’s tired of them looking for something to reach but never having anything to hold.

 

* * *

 

Four days and suddenly Tony is acting like nothing had happened. He’s in the kitchen one day, measuring, or not really measuring, coffee grounds to put into the filter, more so just pouring and eyeballing it when Steve walks into the kitchen.

 

“Tony.” His voice is higher, a little surprised to see him standing there barefoot and with circles under his eyes.

 

“Steven, always good to see you.”

 

 _Really, cause the last time that you saw me you practically ran from me._ Steve bites the inside of his cheek while he looks down at the ground, figuring out what to say that won't make Tony go back into hiding. He knows that will just spark a fight, that Steve was the first one to move, that he was the one attempting to walk away.

 

He doesn’t ask him about sleep, about what he’s been doing but instead decides that he’ll play along, pretend it didn’t happen if that’s what Tony wants.

 

He takes a cup of coffee, sits there glancing up at Tony moving around, at how he moves items on the counter like he’s actually doing something. Eventually running out of things to do Tony takes a seat next to Steve at the bar. When he sits, he stool moves a little to the left, a little closer into Steve’s space and Steve finds himself not minding it but instead leaning in.

 

They sit like that, close and in silence. Tony looks at the date on the newspaper in Steve’s hands. June 27th.

 

“Your birthday is soon.”

 

“Never really cared much for it.”

 

Tony gets it, the way that birthdays are filled with disappointment.

 

“Don’t like that you have to share the day with the greatest country on earth? Thought you would love that? I mean you can’t get much more cliche than you.” Tony takes the paper out of Steve’s hands and absentmindedly starts scanning the articles. “It’s ok, you can admit it, I wouldn’t to share my birthday either.”

 

Steve turns to the side so he can look at Tony. “That’s not it.”

 

“Are you sure it’s not? It’s ok, I mean really, it’s just your whole Captain America thing really screams, well you know, America.” He knows that Tony isn’t saying it to be hurtful, or anything really other than to get a rise out of him.

 

“I don’t like fireworks.” It clicks into place and Tony looks up from the paper and up at Steve and tries to place the colors of the flag against him, and all the years of war that must be rattling around in him.

 

“We have the Avengers thing that night, but you don’t have to go. We can make up some excuse. In fact, I don’t have to go, none of us should go-”

 

“It’s fine, really.” There’s a small smile tugging at Steve’s lips and Tony believes him.

 

* * *

 

The fourth of July breathes explosions, blooms colors that Steve feels he will never see. He doesn’t know how to say that his birthday reminds him of war, reminds him of battle scars and torn love letters, of last words. That the bang and the clatter in the sky makes a similar sound to a field mine when a soldier's foot lands on it.

 

Tony stands behind Steve on the balcony and Tony wishes he had a drink, the burn of alcohol down his throat, something to occupy his hands. His dangerous hands that want to flutter, that are finding their way to the small of Steve’s back, how they seem to rest in the dip there like it was carved out for him.

 

Steve turns his head to the side to look at Tony, to focus on the light reflecting in his eyes instead of the sky.

 

“We don’t have to be up here, we can go inside, celebrate in there. After all the whole country is celebrating your birthday. I can’t even get a bash like this.” Tony nods his head to the fireworks.

 

Steve feels his lips pulling up in a smile, finds his feet shifting and himself sliding just a tiny bit closer to Tony. He wishes he could blame it on something, molecules or gravity, but knows it’s because he wants to lean further into Tony’s touch. Tony who’s hand is playing a small symphony on Steve’s back, who’s fingers can’t stop moving in small rhythmic patterns.

 

“Yeah, we can go inside.”

 

* * *

 

They end up on the floor of Steve’s bedroom. Not like that. That’s just where they end up, with the lights off and the curtains open to let in the lights from the city.

 

Only if Tony could find a way to say, I never stop feeling everything at once. He feels too much as he sits there, his hands still looking for something, wondering what the fuck it is that he thinks he’s doing.

 

The proximity of planets is nothing like the proximity of another body close to his. There’s such a thing as twin hurt, as mirroring, but it’s hard to recognize it when they won't look each other in the eyes. When their backs are pressed together because it’s easier this way.

 

Steve has been waiting for over a week now, waiting to talk to Tony about the other day and yeah he told himself he was gonna play along but he can’t, not when he doesn’t have answers.

 

“You asked me what I know about colors, and I told you. There has to be something you know, something that Maria had told you.” _Something to how you know my eyes were blue._

 

The women of Anthony Stark’s life have shaped him in ways he doesn’t realize. That he can trace is back to the color red as well, back to Ana Jarvis’s hair, how her husband would kiss her temples when they would watch Tony and tell her, “your lipstick matches your hair.”

 

That it traces a dot to the girl in MIT who pulled Tony in close and said, “I heard you have a thing for redheads.” She was his third one that month.

 

Then to Pepper, reliable and ever steady Pepper and how Tony thought, “of course she’s a redhead, why would she be anything else?” And how they all connect like stars in a constellation.

 

That when he would sit in the backseat of the car, Maria would point out the window and say, “today the sky is cornflower blue and one day you’ll know the different hues of it.” That she told him at night she liked to watch the sunset because it was a constant, something that was always beautiful.

 

“Not really, no. If I had a better gauge, if someone had said something to me then maybe it would be easier for me to categorize what color is which and what they belong to.”

 

“But you said it worked, the glasses?”

 

Tony sighs, feels his back press against Steve’s. “I’m not sure anymore.”

 

“I don’t think it’s possible to imagine color. I think they worked.” Steve is sure in his words and it makes Tony pause for a moment, makes him take in Steve’s features and how belief seems to be rolling off of him.

 

“I just can’t figure out why they stopped then. What use is it being a genius when you can’t even solve a problem?” Tony taps his fingers against his knees.

 

“You think that if you have more information then you’ll be able to progress further, figure out where the problem is?”

 

“That’s my only solution at the moment. That or break the damn thing.” It’s Tony’s way of saying, _I don't know if I should be doing this anymore, maybe that was a sign for me to give up._ But that isn’t like Tony Stark, isn’t like the man who escaped being held captive, who turned a company around, who strapped a missile to his back and aimed for the sky.

 

“Let me help, maybe a second set of eyes is what you need.” He feels Steve turn his head to the side as if he’s trying to look over his shoulder at Tony.

 

He thinks that this could potentially be a really bad idea, but he likes the thought of Steve working with him on something that doesn’t have to do with aliens or villains, something that isn’t mandated.

 

“You know I’m not really a team kind of guy.”

 

“You are, you just like to pretend that you aren’t. You work well with Banner.”

 

“That’s _different._ ”

 

“It will work, this isn’t the field. This is your turf, just tell me what you need me to do.”

 

* * *

 

Tony resists the urge to start listing absurd things for Steve to be doing in order to “help”. He thinks about asking him to rearrange the artwork just to watch him lift and bend over and immediately stops himself in his tracks.

 

Instead they sit down across from each other at one of the worktops, wires and tools strewn about. Tony picks up the glasses and hands them to Steve.

 

“Here, put them on, it’s not like it will do anything.”

 

Steve grabs them gently, as if they’ll break from light pressure. He’s hesitant as he puts them on, not too sure what he’s expecting to see. They rest on the bridge of his nose, hug tight to his temples and rest behind his ears.

 

He looks at Tony, blinks, one, two, three, four times. He watches Tony sigh, watches him blink and stare up at the ceiling, watches him spin around on the stool he’s sitting on.

 

“See, just normal, every day, millions of dollar glasses.” Watching him spin on the chair starts to cast shadows, it changes Tony’s features in the light depending on which way he is turning. From having a sloped nose one moment to sharp cheek bones the next and Steve can’t help but think again of half light as he feels his heart tighten.

 

There it is, the flicker, glimpse, and it feels like the earth is moving too fast, like it’s heading into a collision of some sort and Steve feels himself stumble into the table, stumble into color, falls like angels fall from heaven and crash hard into the ground.

 

Steve rips off the glasses and Tony is right behind him, hummingbird hands hovering, not sure where to touch. Steve doesn’t remember the last time he was out of breath during anything that wasn’t a battle and he finds himself feeling sixteen again, wanting to put his head between his legs and thinking of his mother with his eyes shut tight.

 

“Rogers, Rogers, I’m sorry, I didn’t know what they would do, I don’t even know what just happened-”

 

“They worked, they worked, they worked.” It's a crescendo, how his voice starts out small and becomes louder and more even as he says it. 

 

And when Steve opens his eyes again it's desaturated and ugly and it doesn’t feel the same.

 

* * *

 

Steve spends the rest of the day staying busy. He goes for a run, goes down to the gym, rips open a few punching bags. He goes to his room to draw and the only thing that seems to want to come from him is calloused hands and long eyelashes.

 

It’s been building in him, an idea or a thought and finally he feels brave enough to say it out loud. Steve was never one to run from his problems, but sometimes it takes him a little while to catch up.

 

He thinks of the way that Tony’s hands always seem to be by him, hovering and looking for something to grab onto and how Steve wishes that they would reach out and touch more. That maybe there could be something more with them, something outside of the Avengers and fighting. Something where he can continue to feel Tony’s back pressed against his as they tell each other the things that are too hard to say.

 

That what he saw with those glasses on is already burned behind his eyelids the way the sun is after staring at it for too long.

 

He doesn't know how Tony did it, how he say something so vivid and so full of life then just went back to how things were. Ok so maybe that isn't exactly what happened, maybe it explains the four days locked away just a little bit better. That isn't Steve, he isn't one to hide, he isn't one to hold in how he feels and right now he feels like riptides and hurricanes and a swelling he never wants to stop. 

 

He goes looking for Tony, it’s not like it’s hard to find him. He’s exactly where Steve left him, on the same stool, with the glasses still in his hands.

 

He thinks about saying something about fresh starts but it comes out like this, “I’ve been looking at it wrong, looking at me wrong, this situation. I thought that coming back, being unfrozen, that it was a tragedy, just something awful that happened to me, but honestly maybe it’s a fresh start. Maybe this is one of those, everything happens for a reason kind of deals.”

 

“What are you saying?”

 

“I’m saying that I think I’m here for a reason, I think the reason has something to do with you.”

 

Sirens yell in Tony’s mind and he wants to push Steve away, to tell him he has already had this conversation with himself, and steve, multiple times in his mind and it always ends the same. It always ends without either of them seeing color, with Steve miserable because Tony couldn’t give him that.

 

“Rogers,

 

“Listen, please, for once in your life, listen to me Tony.” It’s not the Captain America stance he’s doing, not this time. His back isn’t straight, instead his spine is curved and his hands aren’t steady and his eyes look just a little bit tired and that’s what makes Tony stop and nod his head.

 

“I thought that I had a lot to be sorry for, or guilty for. I thought that I wasn’t allowed to move on from the past, that the ghosts were supposed to stay ghosts and that I was supposed to let them haunt me but I can’t live that way anymore, and neither can you. Tony, when I’m with you, I forget about those things for a little bit. That this place, this time, feels a little bit more like home each and every day. I see it, in your eyes, in the lines around them, and how you feel guilty for the things that have happened to the people around you, and to the things that have happened that we’re in your control and all I can think about is how I want to make those things go away, like you do for me.”

 

“I don’t know how to be that person,” Tony practically chokes it out, like it’s killing him just to say it.

 

Steve shakes his head, closes his eyes briefly. “You already are, don’t you see it?”

 

“No,” it’s barely a whisper but of course Steve hears it.

 

“If you don’t want this, whatever it is, that’s fine. I just want you to know that I’ll finish this project with you.”

 

Steve doesn’t wait for an answer, instead he walks out with his head held high because his mother always told him, _you always stand up._

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when i lie to myself and say i can do something in three chapters


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s two sides to every story. Steve wonders if that means that there’s two sides to every memory. That he doesn’t just exist inside his own but also in Tony’s. He wonders what the differences are. He wonders if they’re subtle, small things like the shade of grey that a shirt is, or what kind of food was being eaten. Or if they are drastic things, like words altered.

Tony doesn’t know how long he stands there, feet stuck in place. His eyes wide, if it wasn’t for the occasional blink and the tremble in his hands he would think he was a man frozen in time. That thought is enough to snap him out of it, enough to get him moving quickly to his workshop. 

 

He doesn’t chase after Steve, he can’t, but he replays what Steve says on loop like he’s watching a film. “ _ Whatever this is, _ ”

 

It spurns more than just hope in Tony, it awakens the underlying too. He could map it out, make a blueprint of it, categorize it, label it any way he wants, there is always a path of destruction, of dissonance in his wake. 

 

And Steve? Steve will be the ultimate casualty. 

 

His days feel like they’re filled entirely of sharp edges, white bright and burning. That the stars he breathes in are battling between his ribs. 

 

There’s a dreadful amount of hope attached to it, something he never wanted for himself. That Steve would even want him in any way. It’s not that he doesn’t think he’s deserving, it’s the twisting feeling he gets in his stomach that he would never be the one to make Steve see colors, that Steve would settle for their idea of normalcy which includes late nights and bickering. 

 

He’s torn at the idea of it, that even though he wouldn’t see color he knows how happy he would be. Would it be enough for Steve though? 

 

He thinks that he can love him with the right intentions. He thinks that he can love him with no arguments, with no breaking down. It’s what he thinks though, he isn’t too sure if he can get the execution of it down right. 

 

Tony thinks that he is ever changing, that with each new day brings a new piece of him forth or deletes an old piece. He isn’t too sure about the science of it, he just knows he changes with the times, with wires and waves. 

 

He likes it this way, something about not being predictable. He likes the way that it’s hard to know his favorite drink, if he wants his coffee black or with cream. Even when he would tell Pepper, “not today, I don’t want sugar today” she wouldn’t believe him, she would set the cup down and pull a smile and say, “of course you do Tony.” And he always let her believe because when she smiled he couldn’t be the one to take it away from her, not when he had so many times already and he knew he would many times more. 

 

It’s how he can’t decide if he wants that for Steve, that unpredictability. That constant strain of not knowing what the day will bring. 

 

“Maybe in being unpredictable it makes me predictable.” He says it out loud, the slim frame of the glasses playing between his fingers. 

 

* * *

Steve runs his hands through his hair and sits on the bed in defeat. It’s not that it's not fixable, it isn’t necessarily broken. He just doesn’t know how to get them back to that place, the one before the glasses, before, any time before their current situation. 

 

Tony seems closed off at times, something that Steve is only familiar with when seeing Tony like that with other people.

 

He doesn’t want this to be like the past, doesn’t want his present or his future to end up that way. End up knowing that if circumstances had been different then they could be together. 

 

He wants to march back down to the workshop, to tell Tony that none of this matters, that he never cares if he sees color. For all of his years have waiting have put things into a new perspective for him. 

 

He keeps focusing on that flicker of color, not even a second, barely qualifying moment of time where the world was saturated. 

 

He wants to say that it’s fine, that he doesn’t need that, that he would give it all up but he starts weighing in on fairness, on scales and balances and thinks that he shouldn’t take away that opportunity from Tony. 

 

Despite the glasses, despite all of Tony’s words about not needing to see color in the traditional way, he knows that somewhere in there he does. Why else would be spend all of his time devoted to being able to see it? 

 

* * *

Tony looks at himself next to Steve, an old photo from when the team was first assembled, a stark contrast. He can’t help but to feel like they compliment each other.

 

He deconstructs them. Narrows it down to a few things. There is the slow burn, the laughter and light touches. After that he fell, all limbs and sharp angles. The comparisons to things like night and day, to seasons, summer and autumn. There was no landing for him though, no place for his feet to find purchase. Instead he keeps falling, sometimes through glass, shattered edges piercing his skin. Since there is no landing will there still be an apology? “I’m sorry I loved you too much, I’m sorry I didn’t love you enough.” He doesn’t know when it’s going to be too late, or if that moment has already passed.

 

He feels ridiculous for thinking about this, for wanting to spew out confessions, as if it could save them, save  _ him.  _

 

* * *

__

There’s two sides to every story. Steve wonders if that means that there’s two sides to every memory. That he doesn’t just exist inside his own but also in Tony’s. He wonders what the differences are. He wonders if they’re subtle, small things like the shade of grey that a shirt is, or what kind of food was being eaten. Or if they are drastic things, like words altered.

 

Then he wonders about the in between, what would be the true version of events and he thinks to an outsider they must look bumbling, awkward at times. That they must look strained, look like they are reaching for something but can never fully grasp it. He wonders if people can see the architecture of their bones, the veins like maps laid out between them. If they can see the way Steve would swallow oceans if it meant he could close the space between them.

 

He falls back onto a memory.

 

“I read an article today,” Steve’s voice breaks through the silence in the workshop.

 

“About what?” Tony asks as his fingers glide across the touch screen of his computer. Mindlessly pulling up schematics and listening to Steve’s voice.

 

“That on average a person has over fifty thousand thoughts a day.” There’s a level of disbelief to his voice.

 

Tony laughs.

 

Steve straightens his back, adjusts his shoulders like he’s shaking something off.  “But think about it, fifty thousand. I don’t think I have even ten coherent thoughts a day sometimes. Do you think you have that many?”

 

Tony pauses. He wants to say his does, and even though not all of them are of Steve the ones that make him the happiest are.

 

“No, I don’t think so. Maybe we’re both anomalies, an outlier in the set of data.”

 

Tony can hear Steve’s low laugh, barely an exhale. “Yeah maybe we are. Don’t mind it though.”

 

“Neither do I.”

 

* * *

 

Tony thinks that he was close, that he was so close to these glasses working. He remembers a conversation with Steve, on trying to explain something they both had no idea how to fully grasp.

 

“Give me an example.” Steve says as he leans across the worktop, parts and tools scattered about.

 

“Imagine that when you think of time you see it in units and structures. But to you it isn’t abnormal, you’re not the anomaly, everyone else is.” Tony runs a hand over his face, hoping that his explanation makes sense.

 

“It just sounds really complicated.” Steve emphasizes the word really and Tony lets out a low laugh.

 

“It is. Okay so, everything has a pattern. Weeks and months come in a pattern and it's laid out more like a map. Things like music can come in colors instead of sound. It’s all consistent and inconsistent stimuli.”

 

“So when people see color for the first time, they can see it in pretty much everything.” 

 

“That’s the idea. Maybe my original formulas were wrong, maybe it’s too hard to grasp because of the inconsistency.”

 

“It seems,” Steve sits up and crosses his arms in front of his chest, “overwhelming.” 

 

Tony walks around the worktop and pulls up a hologram from an article. “It can be. Here’s an article from a couple that got their color together and any time the woman said the man’s name he could sense, or see his name in color, but only when she was the one that said it, not anyone else. It was very overwhelming, something that he didn’t understand at first and caused all sorts of side effects like headaches and a few hospital trips until they figured out what the problem was. So consistent and inconsistent stimuli.” 

 

“I think I understand that.” Steve says as he stares up at the news article. He reads a line and feels an ache in his chest.

 

Tony doesn’t ask him what he means by that but he hopes it has something to do with how he says Steve’s name.  _ When I first said your name it was warm, like a fistful of sun. It was like honey, it came out smoothly. It doesn’t always happen like that, but any time I hear your name or say it it comes to me in warmth. _

 

* * *

Steve doesn’t sleep, not the way he used to. He tosses and turns and keeps his eyes to the ceiling. 

 

He thinks of the word countdown when he thinks of Tony.

 

At night he lays parallel to the sky and he thinks of the satellite New Horizons and all the years it has spent in the dark. He thinks about it traveling along an uncharted path on its own trying to catch up but always out of reach. He thinks if it can spend that many years before reaching its destination then he can, too.

 

He thinks that it is only a matter of time.

 

And in the mornings when he does wake it’s to sweat soaked sheets.

 

He spends more time out of the tower than he wants. He swears he can hear his bones rattle when the train goes along the rails in the subway and he tries not to look at his reflection in the windows.

 

When he is in places that he doesn’t know, thinking about a life that could have been, he puts his memories on exhibit and lays them out.

 

Exhibit A. The time that Tony touched the inside of his wrist, how he held his fingers there until Tony’s pulse started racing. How he looked up at Steve with curious eyes. The way his fingers left his skin, how Tony turned away and they both tried not to notice how their skin felt against one another’s.

 

Exhibit B. He can’t look in mirrors. Can’t look at his smile, his perfectly straight teeth, and not so careful hands and think about how it happened. How he let words form on the tip of his tongue but never released all of the arrows to let them go.

 

* * *

It’s been over a week since their conversation. Where Steve once felt like they were beginning to orbit each other he now feels like they’re repelling one another. 

 

He knows that Tony needs time but he isn’t sure how much, and he’s worried he’ll fall back on his old ways, on Steve’s old ways. He’s worried he’ll be forceful, aggressive even, pound on the workshop glass until Tony has no choice but to either pretend what Steve said never happened or acknowledge it. 

 

Steve can feel his impatience growing, feel it in the tips of his fingertips and how they tingle any time Tony is near.

 

* * *

Steve realizes it when he’s walking through a doorway, the way he always does. He walks in and steps slightly to the side, like he’s always waiting for Tony to enter in after him, that he’s always waiting. 

 

* * *

He enters the workshop without any problems, without Tony putting up extra barriers, programming codes, without anything that says stay away. 

 

It’s been three weeks at this point. Three weeks which should feel like nothing at all but three weeks that feel like they’re doing nothing but expanding and demanding to take up more space. 

 

Tony looks up at Steve, at his eyebrows pinched together and the way his eyes seem to drop at the corners when he’s sad. He looks up at him like he’s been waiting as well. 

 

Steve breaks a small smile and he hopes that it’s enough. 

 

It’s enough. 

 

Tony moves quickly, with purpose, avoiding the sharp corners on the tables to make his way to Steve. Steve who’s arms are resting as his sides, fingers tapping against his thighs, waiting. 

 

Tony closes his eyes and relaxes into Steve’s touch, his cheek resting against the soft cotton of his shirt as Steve’s arms wrap around him. The lingering smell of spearmint, and the remnants of wearing his leather jacket. Tony inhales sharply and lets the memories flood him.

 

It’s years of their friendship wrapped up into this scent, it’s late nights and early mornings, it's the way that Tony would laugh for no reason when he was tired or how he managed to make himself a space in Steve’s life without ever really meaning to. It comes to him in crashes, waves breaking. Tony who didn’t care what anyone thought about him, Tony who only actually cared what a handful of people thought about him, Steve comes to realize.

 

The ache resonates through Steve, he doesn’t realize how his hands are clenched in Tony’s shirt, how he’s pulling him closer to him. He’s trying to piece together all of his broken bits, trying to mend this hack-job hurt they had caused each other. Tony doesn’t notice the way Steve’s arms are wrapped around him like vines, squeezing him and asking for his last gasp of air.

 

When they pull away it's with sidelong glances and shuffling feet.

 

* * *

That’s why he creates, he realizes, why he builds, why he’s always inventing, inventing, inventing. It’s his way of trying to understand, to create a common tongue for others as well. These glasses are a way to try to understand. 

 

* * *

Steve tries not to think about that every day his hands aren’t touching Tony that it's a mistake. That this thing they aren’t talking about is growing between them.

 

Tony will only talk about the glasses, and when he does it’s quick tongued and blurred, like even if Steve was fast he still wouldn’t be able to catch up.

 

* * *

And Tony, well he keeps his lips busy by keeping them pressed to a bottle and if he drinks a little too much, slurs his words too early in the night, Steve can’t bring himself to say anything.

 

He watches Tony’s smile during the day and the slow decay at night. He looks at the way that Tony’s hands hover, how they are always reaching out to touch but never finding where they are suppose to land.

 

He doesn’t tear himself away from Tony though, they stay together as much as they can throughout the days and at night they linger in each other’s presence. Some nights one of them falls asleep in the other’s presence but they’re always gone by morning leaving imprints and a shadow.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i dont know what resolutions are :)


End file.
